Surface treating appliances such as vacuum cleaners are usually provided with one or more surface treating heads, often referred to as cleaner heads. It is common for cleaner heads to be able to be manipulated between different “modes” of use. The different modes can, for example, allow for more effective cleaning by the surface treating head on different types of floor surface, such as carpeted or hard floors. Typically, for high cleaning performance, it is desirable to have a large suction force generated between the surface treating head and the floor surface. However, a large suction force may draw the surface treating head towards the floor with such a large force that it them becomes difficult to move the surface treating head over the floor surface.
In order to address this problem, surface treating heads are often provided with air bleeds that allow air to be drawn into the surface treating head from another part of the surface treating head which is not floor-facing. The air bleeds provide an alternative channel for air to be drawn into the surface treating head, and therefore the suction force between the surface treating head and the floor surface is reduced. These air bleeds may be permanently fixed air bleeds, or alternatively they may be able to be opened or closed by a user. For example, if a user finds it hard to move the surface treating head over a surface, they can choose to open one or more air bleeds. However, this may require stopping the cleaning operation a number of times in order to adjust the air bleeds. It can be frustrating to a user if they need to change the configurations of the air bleeds, particularly if the user cleans over a number of different types of floor surfaces in a single cleaning operation. Furthermore, it is easy for a user to forget to close air bleeds again if they move to a different floor surface. As such, it is often the case that a user will set the air bleeds once, and that they will remain in that configuration, regardless of whether it provides the best balance of cleaning performance and motion resistance.